There’s dislike, and then there’s hatred, and when it comes to artists who make you want to run screaming in the other direction, Celine Dion bests most.

The Canadian singer is an international star, adored by millions for her clear, muscular voice and its penchant for connecting with diverse crowds. But many also openly detest her, viewing her ubiquitous presence as a blight on the cultural skyline.

Critic Carl Wilson dives headlong into this fertile, galvanizing topic in “Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste.” Its title springs from Dion’s most famous album (the one with “Titanic’s” “My Heart Will Go On”) and lives up to it on multiple levels.

Wilson writes and edits for Canada’s national paper the Globe and Mail in Toronto, and his initial revulsion at taking Dion seriously rings deeply due to his nationality. Ostensibly an exploration of the aesthetics and subjectivity of taste, “Let’s Talk About Love” also includes a surprising (and surprisingly interesting) amount of Dion’s history as an artist and Wilson’s squirrelly cultural self-examination.

As Wilson pointed out in a recent essay for Powells.com, his book follows most in Continuum’s 33 1/3 series in looking at the larger sociocultural contexts of seminal albums, as opposed to simply unpacking the immediate context in which they were created or consumed. It just so happens that “Love” is the first of the Continuum series to consider an album for its overt awfulness instead of its value in the critical canon. And, really, this could be the best book of the series.

Chapter titles follow the book’s title (“Let’s Talk About Hate,” “Let’s Talk About Schmaltz,” “Let’s Talk With Some Fans”) and stay relentlessly on-topic through the pocket tome’s brisk 176 pages. We follow Wilson through research and consideration, soul-searching and critical exfoliation, and even to Las Vegas to see one of Dion’s stage shows.

And really, there’s nothing wrong with the scholarly approach — the constant citations, quotes from forbears and wide-angle observations only enhance Wilson’s points, and he nails them succinctly.

But the wordiness is occasionally too much, as in this description of his insecurity in Vegas: “I was a stray member of the cultural-capital tribe deported to a gaudy prison colony run by a phalanx of showgirls who held hourly re-education sessions to hammer me into feeling insignificant and micro-penised.” Fortunately, that Joseph Helleresque brick wall of verbiage is rare.

Wilson eventually comes to several realizations about his own formerly restrictive tastes, even playing “Let’s Talk About Love” at high volumes in his cavernous apartment to drive home his own discomfort. Along the way we’re afforded a fascinating and refreshingly even-handed overview of the history of aesthetics.

Ultimately, the book fulfills the role of all worthy and lasting criticism: It actually makes you want to hear the album.

nonfiction

Let’s Talk About Love A Journey to the End of Taste, By Carl Wilson, $10.95John Wenzel: 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com

has covered everything from comedy, music, film, books and video games to breaking news, business and technology for The Denver Post. He's the author of the Speck/Fulcrum nonfiction book "Mock Stars" and an occasional contributor to Rolling Stone, Esquire and others. As a Dayton, Ohio native, his love of Guided by Voices is about equal to his other obsessions, including Peter Jackson's Middle-earth, "Mr. Show" quotes and Onitsuka Tigers.